Author Topic: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ (Read 1943 times)

Ladislaus · « **Reply #45 on:** July 20, 2017, 09:55:35 AM »

Quote from: Lover of Truth on July 20, 2017, 09:21:28 AM

Those who would claim that the infallible doctrine that teaches that non-members of the Church can be saved within the Church bases its teaching on false suppositions such as the reverse of the above six points need to eliminate such as legitimate objections.

If there's such a thing as BoD, it's because those who can be saved that way are imperfect members of the Church ... because they have some of the critieria necessary for membership (aka profession of the faith). But the reason LoT refuses this more correct course is because this would mean that those who do not profess the Catholic faith cannot be saved. So LoT continues to promote the notion that non-members can be saved. Yet he elsewhere proclaims that he rejects the notion that someone can belong to the soul of the Church without being part of the body. In so doing, in his lack of intellectual capacity, he fails to recognize self-contradiction. If you believe that non-members can be saved, you are in fact stating that people can be saved without belonging to the body of the Church.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #46 on:** July 20, 2017, 09:56:02 AM »

Quote from: Ladislaus on July 20, 2017, 08:54:25 AM

You know, LoT, I don't care whether or not you believe in BoD. St. Thomas did. People here on CI do with whom I have no major issues (e.g. Arvinger). My problem with you is and always has been your promotion of Pelagianism ... such as what's evident in the citation here. You continually assert that things like "our efforts" and sincerity and intentions are salvific, ex opere operantis, without the unmerited ex opere operato grace of the Sacrament. That's utter Pelagian heresy. It's on that count that I continue to denounce you for heresy.

I've repeatedly said that if you merely stated that it's not the desire which saves but, rather, the Sacrament of Baptism, acting through the desire; that if you merely stated that the Sacrament of Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation but that it can be received in voto, then I wouldn't waste a single minute of my time arguing with you. That would be your opinion, one shared by a number of Catholic Doctors, and it's within the boundaries of orthodoxy. I don't agree with it, but I also have no problem with it.

Your issue is the constant promotion of Pelagian heresy and your heretical denial of Trent's dogmatic teaching that the Sacraments are necessary by necessity of means for salvation.

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #47 on:** July 20, 2017, 10:05:02 AM »

Although the Holy Father taught in his encyclical that the expression "Mystical Body of Jesus Christ" is a definition of the true Church, he neither said nor implied that it is the only genuine and accurate definition. Indeed, the literature of scholastic ecclesiology abounds in definitions of the Church, some of which have achieved the status of standard formulae over the course of the centuries. By calling attention to the fact that the expression "Mystical Body of Jesus Christ" is likewise a definition of the Church, and a definition of paramount importance and significance, our Holy Father Pope Pius XII offered to the theologians of the world the opportunity to show how the various types of definitions are mutually complementary and to explain how they combine to bring out the magnificently rich notion of the Church that is conveyed in divine supernatural revelation.

The notion or concept of the Catholic Church, conveyed in God's supernatural message, is tremendously complex. This society is represented to us basically as the association or group within which alone we may find salvific contact with God in Jesus Christ Our Lord. It is the ecclesia sanctorum, the community or the communion of the Saints. Yet it is so constituted in this world that a man may be a member of it without actually living the divine and supernatural life of grace. It is truly a society instituted directly and immediately by Our Lord during the course of His public life in this world. At the same time, however, it is just as truly the continuation and the ultimate status here on earth of the supernatural kingdom of God which has been in existence, as the militant Church of God in Christ, since the days of our first parents. It lives as the militant company of Our Lord's disciples throughout the entire world. In the various cities and districts of the world its members gather to constitute organized individual families or households of the faith in Christ. Yet, at the same time, it is always in a condition of pilgrimage in this world and in its cities. Its ultimate and eternal home is to be found only in the courts of Heaven. Fenton

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #48 on:** July 20, 2017, 10:07:38 AM »

It is precisely because of the complexity of and the wealth of meaning contained in this fundamental notion of the Catholic Church that the theologians have had to set forth many types of definitions of the Church. There are three main types of definitions which scholastic theology recognizes as applicable to the Church Militant. The first of these, the widest or most general kind of definition of the Church, applies to the entire company of those joined to God in Jesus Christ. It takes in the Church Triumphant in Heaven, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Militant here on earth. The second variety of definition is restricted to the Church Militant, but it considers this company, not only according to its form and structure under the economy of the New Testament, but according to its conditions under the Old Dispensation also. The third type of definition explains only the Church Militant of the New Testament. Within this type there are several subdivisions, all of which contribute powerfully to the explanation of the basic notion of the Church, as this is brought out in the various names and figures used to designate the Church in the inspired books of the New Testament.

These three basic types of definitions of the true Church of Jesus Christ have been in common use in sacred theology since the days of the great Jesuit theologian and controversialist, Gregory of Valentia (d. 1603). And, according to Gregory of Valentia, the broadest type of definition of the Church, the one which applies to this society as it lives in Heaven, in Purgatory, and on earth, is the formula describing it as "the multitude of those who have been gathered together by the grace of God's calling into the true worship of God and into the true and God-given knowledge of God, whether that knowledge be obscure, as it is in the case of the knowledge of the faith, or clear and manifest, as it is in the case of the blessed." Fenton

Last Tradhican · « **Reply #49 on:** July 20, 2017, 08:20:20 PM »

Quote from: Lover of Truth on July 20, 2017, 09:31:32 AM

Thus the Feeneyits have an "infallible" insight as to who is damned and who is not, with absolute assurance even though the Church herself only claims to know some who have been saved, and these are her pre-Vatican II canonized Saints. Judas the Iscariot is the only one holy Mother Church would admit to be damned with any sort of certainty. God's work is simple. On the Day of Judgment, God does not look into your heart but asks for your card. If you don't have a card that proves you are a Roman Catholic then the Hell with you. Our purpose in these articles is to prove that God is not the arbitrary Tyrant the Feeneyits, perhaps unwittingly, make Him to be.

John Paul II and Bergolio agree with you, that maybe no one is in hell, for as you say it is not for certain that even Judas Iscariot in in hell. That's your opinion and theirs, the opinion of heretics, gates of hell.

Here is certainty ( I could post 100's more but I do not need more):

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Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, Sess. 8, Nov. 22, 1439, ex cathedra: “Whoever wishes to be saved, needs above all to hold the Catholic faith; unless each one preserves this whole and inviolate, he will without a doubt perish in eternity.– But the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in the Trinity, and the Trinity in unity... Therefore let him who wishes to be saved, think thus concerning the Trinity. “But it is necessary for eternal salvation that he faithfully believe also in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ...the Son of God is God and man...– This is the Catholic faith; unless each one believes this faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.”

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The Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, under Pope Pius X, in 1907, in answer to a question as to whether Confucius could have been saved, wrote:

“It is not allowed to affirm that Confucius was saved. Christians, when interrogated, must answer that those who die as infidels are damned”.

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http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1552xavier4.html
From: Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), Vol. II, pp. 331-350; reprinted in William H. McNeil and Mitsuko Iriye, eds., Modern Asia and Africa, Readings in World History Vol. 9, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 20-30.
St. Francis Xavier:
Letter from Japan, to the Society of Jesus in Europe, 1552

One of the things that most of all pains and torments these Japanese is, that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut, so that there is no egress therefrom. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives, and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope, any way to free them by prayer from that eternal misery, and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. Their grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully; they almost pine away with sorrow. But there is this good thing about their trouble---it makes one hope that they will all be the more laborious for their own salvation, lest they like their forefathers, should be condemned to everlasting punishment. They often ask if God cannot take their fathers out of hell, and why their punishment must never have an end. We gave them a satisfactory answer, but they did not cease to grieve over the misfortune of their relatives; and I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing men so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain about a thing which is already done with and can never be undone.

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #50 on:** July 24, 2017, 06:21:10 AM »

It is precisely because of the complexity of and the wealth of meaning contained in this fundamental notion of the Catholic Church that the theologians have had to set forth many types of definitions of the Church. There are three main types of definitions which scholastic theology recognizes as applicable to the Church Militant. The first of these, the widest or most general kind of definition of the Church, applies to the entire company of those joined to God in Jesus Christ. It takes in the Church Triumphant in Heaven, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Militant here on earth. The second variety of definition is restricted to the Church Militant, but it considers this company, not only according to its form and structure under the economy of the New Testament, but according to its conditions under the Old Dispensation also. The third type of definition explains only the Church Militant of the New Testament. Within this type there are several subdivisions, all of which contribute powerfully to the explanation of the basic notion of the Church, as this is brought out in the various names and figures used to designate the Church in the inspired books of the New Testament. Fenton

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #51 on:** July 24, 2017, 11:49:28 AM »

These three basic types of definitions of the true Church of Jesus Christ have been in common use in sacred theology since the days of the great Jesuit theologian and controversialist, Gregory of Valentia (d. 1603). And, according to Gregory of Valentia, the broadest type of definition of the Church, the one which applies to this society as it lives in Heaven, in Purgatory, and on earth, is the formula describing it as "the multitude of those who have been gathered together by the grace of God's calling into the true worship of God and into the true and God-given knowledge of God, whether that knowledge be obscure, as it is in the case of the knowledge of the faith, or clear and manifest, as it is in the case of the blessed."

There are, incidentally, certain standard definitions of the Church Triumphant, as distinct from the Church Suffering and the Church Militant. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches "the Church, according to the status viae [the condition of those who are working towards the Beatific Vision, but who have not as yet actually arrived at it] is the congregation of the faithful (congregation fidelium). According to the status patriae, however [the condition of those who have already come to the homeland of heaven] it is the congregation of those who possess the Beatific Vision (congregation comprehendentium)." The Catechism of the Council of Trent, first published in 1566, defined the Church Triumphant as "the most glorious and happy assembly of the blessed spirits and of those who have overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, and who enjoy eternal beatitude, free and safe from the troubles of this world." Both of these definitions obviously fit within the framework of the broadest type of definition of the Church enunciated by Gregory of Valentia.

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #52 on:** August 24, 2017, 08:02:59 AM »

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The most general or most inclusive type of definition, as it was formulated by Gregory of Valentia, is a description which correctly and effectively shows up the unity of all the persons who belong to the Church Triumphant, to the Church Suffering, and to the Church Militant. It speaks of all these persons as being really gathered or assembled together, that is, as constituting a genuine definite social unity. Likewise it speaks of these persons as being brought into their social unity "by the grace of God's calling." Thus it insists upon the basic fact that the assembly or congregation itself is definitely a reality of the supernatural order, something concerned, ultimately, with the intimate understanding and possession of God as He is in Himself, with the clear knowledge of the Triune God in the Beatific Vision. Fenton

Author Topic: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ (Read 1943 times)

Ladislaus

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Ladislaus

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Lover of Truth

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Lover of Truth

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Last Tradhican

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Lover of Truth

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Lover of Truth

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ

Lover of Truth

Re: Definitive Definitions of the Mystical Body of Christ